Neo-Cons are going to have a harder time equating the Iranian threat with 9/11 as the anniversary of the attack on America nears if the latest Al-Qaeda propaganda tape is to be believed. In a new broadcast, Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri viciously attacks Tehran as “collaborators” with the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“The leadership in Tehran is collaborating with the Americans in their occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan,” Zawahiri said in the extract broadcast by Al-Jazeera today, reports AFP.

“It recognises the subservient (to Washington) governments of these two countries, while at the same time pledging death and destruction to any state which dares touch Iranian soil,” added the Egyptian deputy to Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Zawahiri’s purported rebuke towards the Iranians is not going to sit well with supporters of John McCain, for it was the Republican nominee who attempted to blur the lines between Sunni and Shia back in March when he was corrected by Joe Lieberman after claiming Iran was training Al-Qaeda terrorists.

Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.”

Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.” A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate’s ear. McCain then said: “I’m sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda.”

In reality, the two are arch enemies, Iran being a Shiite theocracy and Al-Qaeda being a Sunni Muslim organization.

The build-up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was similarly preceded by relentless claims on behalf of top Bush administration officials that Saddam Hussein was in league with Al-Qaeda.

In reality, “Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al-Qaeda to provide material or operational support,” according to a CIA report released in September 2006.

The report concluded that there were no formal links between Saddam Hussein and any Al-Qaeda leaders before the 2003 invasion.

With the anniversary of 9/11 just around the corner, we can expect Neo-Cons and Bush administration officials to continue to invoke the 9/11 victims as a pretext for propagandizing for a war with Iran – despite the fact that Al-Qaeda, the very group the U.S. government claims was responsible for 9/11, has now publicly scorned Tehran.